Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday January 21, 2011 @02:06PM
from the thank-you-science dept.

dbune writes "Young people who argue with their parents over wearing the same pair of smelly jeans can now cite the work of a 20-year old University of Alberta student who wore the same jeans for 15 months straight. From the article: 'Josh Le wore the same pair of jeans to break in the raw denim, so it would wrap the contours of his body, leaving distinct wear lines. He had his textile professor test the jeans for bacteria before washing them for the first time.
The results showed high counts of five different kinds of bacteria, but nothing in the range of being considered a health hazard."

Know anything more about this kind of stuff? Like for example I always wondered if I could tell if I was having trouble digesting something based on the different smells of shit and things like that. The sulfurish smell would be sulfide compounds from protein, the kinda sweet smell would by butyric acid and other short chain fatty acids from fat and oils. I know theres a couple others though.

Drink a lot of coke and your sweat will turn white clohtes yellow when you sweat.

Also another fun experiment is to cut up some garlic and just hold it in your hand, within a short while you will start tasting garlic. (My mom teaches chemistry and has shown all sorts of neat trick that helps her students understand the dangers of what they are doing)

Young man (seeing Churchill leaving the bathroom without washing his hands): At Eton they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.Churchill: At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands.

Young man (seeing Churchill leaving the bathroom without washing his hands): At Eton they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.

Churchill: At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands.

It is not the urine that is a concern but rather the bacteria on your junk which gets transferred to your hands. I assume that you touch your junk when you take a piss and that you walk around wearing cloths. Bacteria tends to grow during the day in the nether regions which is why it is good to take a shower every day and why you should wash your hands after taking a piss.

I think you have that wrong, its the bacteria that is growing on everything and anything you touched, esp. in a public restroom that you don't want on your hands, if its on your junk, its properly already on your hands.

That is thoroughly disgusting. I hope to god for the sake of people who had to sit near this guy that he does not ever eat asparagus. Also, I feel sorry for anyone who had to sit on that seat after him.

I for one cannot believe the level of bacteria is no higher than jeans washed after only one or two wearings.

I was my clothes because I want to smell nice. Not because I am afraid of getting sick from them.

My brother uses febreze on his hockey stuff, plus he has a bounce sheet in the hockey bag. Apparently he doesn't need to wash it nearly as often. However, he lives two hours away... downwind... so I can't guarantee this from personal experience.

Sports equipment is a bit different. When you use it, you're often sweaty and smelly anyways, so a little extra stench isn't all that hard to tolerate. When I played football in high school I only washed my practice jersey and pants about once per week too.

Because to many people, including myself, any overwhelming chemical scents aren't nice either. I often choose non-scented antiperspirants and detergents for that reason. I also don't like candles, air fresheners, etc. but I love the smell of food cooking or real flowers.

Indeed. Also, though it might not be a health hazard per se, the general feeling of dirtiness does effect my well being. I realize that its' probably psychological/stress related, but for example if I wake up on a weekend and don't shower until noon for example (whereas normally I shower before work a few hours earlier than that), I will without fail be starting to develop a bad headache. Just the general bad feeling of being unclean will affect me.

Feel free to actually research the topic before posting then. As to your specific skin condition that's completely beside the point. You're correct in that it's alleviated by removing oil from the skin but the norm is for the skin to _become_ rashed if oil is removed by excessive showering (see link below).

Tell me, do you believe in evolution? If so, do you believe the human skin evolved under daily wash&soap conditions?

Did he botch the results when he repeatedly threw his jeans in a freezer?

When his jeans got a bit funky smelling, Le's solution was to put them in the freezer. "There were times when it had a bad odour, like in the seventh month," he said. "That's when I threw it in the freezer and magically when it came out it was odourless."

I know very little about microbiology, but could that have significantly affected growth rates of all/certain types of bateria or killed them altogether?

yes, when the ice crystals form the envelope of water that surrounds your proteins and dna and such is disrupted, causing them to unfold and probably not refold correctly upon thawing. So the cell will not be able to function and die. Also ice is less dense than water so the cell may swell up and burst during the freezing process. Bacteria have cell walls though so they are more sturdy. Likely at least a few would survive. Also when the pants were removed from the freezer all the smelly molecules had low ki

Some bacteria are killed by cold and others just have their reproduction slowed/stopped.

In any case, bacteria themselves aren't what produce odor, it's their waste products. Think about that. You stink because bacteria are doing number two all over your body, but especially under your armpits and around your crotch and ass.

If freezing reduces/eliminates odor, then the waste products of the bacteria are just undergoing a chemical change that makes them not stink anymore. Its effect on the bacteria themselves

Doesn't really invalidate his test, since this is a standard technique for people breaking in unwashed raw denim jeans. Presumably he was testing the safety of that practice and not the safety of simply being grimy and never washing your clothes

What the hell? The test had a sample size of one, just one. Obviously it had no control group to compare it with. It is just an anecdote. Not an experiment, it can not be used to advance any hypothesis. And you find fault with some itsy bitsy thing like throwing it in the freezer? This stupid thing does not deserve a posting in slashdot. May be in some mid-morning talk shows where bored housewives gasp at the idea of not washing jeans for 15 months. It definitely does not deserve your response. And stupidest thing in all this is me taking time to write a reply in the middle of my work day.

With respect to sample size, similar experiments have been repeated, admittedly in the field under uncontrolled circumstances, several million times over at least the last 5 decades, approximately 100% of the occasions the utility of function of quarters for beer money exceeded the utility function for quarters for laundry money among male college students

I'm not sure about that. I'm pretty sure one of the admins here has been trying a similar test for the last 10 years or so. albeit in 12 month runs by the looks of it. It's kinda hard not to notice that once a year his hair goes from, pretty much, something almost solidified in a helmet to fluffy and you can tell the pattern on his shirt.

So far he hasn't published anything in a microbiology journal, but I'm sure that when he does, the results of all those twelve-month runs will advance science seriously;)

The article doesn't make it clear if he only wore that single pair of pants every single day, and if not, how often did he actually wear them? I don't think it is even possible for a pair of jeans to be worn 450 times without completely falling apart, so obviously he must have worn other clothes too.

I have three pairs of jeans (I had four, but that's a long story). I bought them at the same time, 5-6 years ago. Only one of them ripped wide open at the crotch last year, so now I have only two. I wash(ed) them all regularly.

It was a dark and stormy night. I had just finished washing jeans #2 which I had bought 4-5 years earlier, and inspected them. Being better than shit tier quality, they were, as expected, still in good condition. Even the crotch was in good condition and showed no signs that it might dramatically fail at some inconvenient time. As is typical for dark and story nights, there was a conspicous lack of sunlight and very high humidity, so I knew the jeans would not dry on the line outside. I put them into the dryer, along with some other clothes, and I was careful to add a fabric softener sheet as well. Just as the dryer started rumbling, I heard the phone ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Kyrio, this is Reeno."

I was ecstatic. "Hey Reeno!! Good to hear from you finally! What have you been up to?" I had not heard from Reeno in a very long time. We had a falling out many years ago, over some dumb topic like jean quality tiers or something, but that was all water under the bridge, now.

"Well, I have been writing a novel."

"No shit, really?! What's it about?" I was intrigued.

"Oh, I don't think I can sum it up very briefly. Here, let me read it to you."

#include "war and peace.txt"

As Reeno's scratchy voice managed to croak out the final words, I noticed the sunlight shining through the window next to my phone charger (the batteries had long ago failed) and the eery silence that had so long dominated the house after the dryer had finished. What was there to say? I didn't have the heart to tell Reeno that his novel sounded an awful lot like another one written by Tolstoy. It was a very awkward situation -- awkward like realizing that you're not wearing any pants. I went to the dryer and took out good ol' reliable jeans #2.

"Good bye, Kyrio," he said, and I pressed the "END" button on the phone.

Exhausted, I walked out my door into the bright and calm day. A pity; the line would certainly be able to dry my jeans now, but there was no need. That's when I noticed that the storm had blown down the drying line. I bent down to pick up the end so that I could re-tie it, when to my annoyance, there was a terrible ripping sound and the brisk air blew into my crotch.

"Oh no! Jeans #2! Noooo!!" I wailed. I know that some people buy shit tier quality jeans, so they never grow attached to their garments during their ephemeral lifetimes, but it's different for me. I had these jeans for half a decade! Crying and heartbroken, I ran back into the house and picked up the phone.

"Reeno! My jeans! I'm down from four pairs to only three," I brokenly told him through sobs.

"Oh my god! What happened?!"

"It's a long story," I began, and that's when I heard it. The bastard was laughing at me. Laughing!

"a job that requires you to put on jeans and then spend days immersed in damp clientele."

Sounds like a job I once had on a fishing trawler. Jeans were not a problem but finding a jumper that would last more than a couple of trips before the sleves rotted and fell off was quite a challenge.

This is a job for the Myth Busters! We need a jean control group and 36 pairs of sterilized Levi 501s, STAT!

I only wear mine at work, sitting in a clean chair (more or less), and swap them out every other day for a two week period. Unless food or dirt stains appear, then they get washed again. 15 months of daily wearing without a research grant? That's just nasty.

Speaking as someone who used to live in Toronto, given the results of the last set of mayoral elections, I'm pretty sure Toronto should be one of the most ashamed populations in North America outside of Peterborough.

Something tells me that if he had conducted this experiment a few hundred miles south and spent any reasonable amount of time outside he would have had different results entirely.

A few hundred? Roughly 200 miles south of the main campus of the University of Alberta (in Edmonton) is Calgary. About 300 miles south is Lethbridge, Alberta. Even 500 miles south and you're in Great Falls, Montana. None of those places is likely to be significantly warmer than the University of Alberta.